New Buildings Chief Aims To Cut Red Tape

Streamlining Effort To Aid New Projects

The new head of the city's troubled Buildings Department has launched a series of internal reforms in an attempt to streamline operations and speed issuance of building permits.

The changes come as the Daley administration tries to keep pace with a construction boom that is resounding across the city amid complaints that red tape at City Hall has produced costly and frustrating delays on some new projects.

In one move, Mary Richardson-Lowry, Mayor Richard Daley's nominee for buildings commissioner, said Monday she has jettisoned part of a new computer system "upgrade"--initiated less than seven months ago--that has been widely panned by developers and architects who complained it was slowing down the permit approval process.

Separately, Richardson-Lowry said her department no longer is insisting that developers submit the names of a project's contractors and subcontractors in advance.

Instead, the names--which must be checked to ensure proper licensing--will be required before the permit is issued.

This means that a developer no longer will have to wait until his construction team has been selected to get architectural plans into the permit approval pipeline.

Richardson-Lowry, whose nomination was approved Monday by a City Council committee, said she also is planning to establish four satellite offices across the city where homeowners can apply for permits for new fences, windows and other small improvement projects.

"We recognize that homeowners can't always get downtown," she told the council's Buildings Committee. "They work like most of us five days a week. We are trying to make it more convenient for them."

The satellite offices, to begin operation in the fall, will be open on Saturdays.

The reforms are designed to increase customer convenience and help the Buildings Department handle what has become a crush of permit applications.

The heavy pace is continuing this year as one new project after another is announced.

Developers and architects have criticized what they describe as a needlessly bureaucratic permit approval process that sometimes produces a several-month wait before they can proceed with construction.

The Tribune reported in May that the Daley administration planned a shake-up in the Buildings Department to deal with the problems.

"Clearly in the area of permits, there is a lot we can do better," Richardson-Lowry said.

A $270,000 computer upgrade by Xerox Corp. late last year included a feature that permitted large blueprints to be scanned digitally. Theoretically, that was to have allowed electrical, plumbing and other department reviewers to inspect them simultaneously.

But the drawings were reduced in size so much in order to fit onto 17-inch computer screens that the reviewers at times had difficulty seeing critical details. Plans sometimes were sent back to architects for corrections to errors that did not exist.

Only simple schematics, like those for electrical and plumbing systems, now are being scanned into the computer. Other features of the system, including one that tracks the status of each permit through the approval process, continue to be used, officials said.

They said it has not yet been determined if the city will seek a partial refund from Xerox.

"We're already starting to see some changes . . . that we have found to be positive," said Bruce Deason, assistant vice president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago. "We're real pleased so far."